At University of California Santa Barbara studying Psychology (1986-1991) I was searching for my life’s path and work. The theme of wanting to be “Free” kept coming up. I was a prisoner of my shyness since childhood and “growing up” had only made me taller, not more socially secure. I also suffered from a weak immune system all my life, hindering me as I competed in collegiate swimming (first year) and gymnastics. Perhaps my fragile system stemmed from my sugar addiction, the effect of vaccine toxins, the emotional trauma of divorce, or several head injuries I suffered as a kid. Certainly all had negatively impacted my 6-yr. old, 50 lb body. As a teen I saw my grandmother heal herself naturally of terminal cancer through the Gerson Protocol, consisting of a strict diet and coffee enemas. She rapidly improved, was declared cancer-free in 7 months, and taught me the importance of nutrition and the limitations of western medicine. I had also witnessed my mother’s healing. She was very young when she had me and was an undiagnosed alcoholic. She left me with my dear father in Boston when I was two. There in New England I visited her often, over the next few years, which was probably more traumatic than if I didn’t see her at all. Every two weeks I got to spend a joyous weekend with her only to feel the deep anguish of having to say goodbye again. To a small child this was like a deep scab being ripped off twice a month. When I turned 6 she moved across the country to California. Each summer I’d eagerly await the sweet weeks I got to spend with her. She eventually sobered up when I was 12 and became a massage therapist and nutritionist. She married a man who went on to Chiropractic College towards the end of their 8-year marriage. At age 12 he introduced me to muscle testing and the idea that the body held the secrets to its own healing. I learned that through kinesiology you could access these secrets. I then forgot all about muscle testing for the next 10 years as I quietly struggled through my nervousness, immune system challenges, and sugar addiction. I would be remiss not to mention my early athletic endeavors, as they reflect a steely, determined side of my personality. Later I realized that the drive behind these accomplishments was rooted, at least in part, by my need to prove my worthiness. The impact of a mother leaving a young child can manifest in many ways. In me, it resulted in feeling unlovable. The result was an athletic monster!

By age 7 I broke the national record for the javelin throw (breaking the old mark by over 7 feet) and a New England record for the mile run (7:47). By age 10 I was New England champion in gymnastics, judo, top-3 in swimming, MVP of my basketball league, and had won a number of tennis tournaments. I also had become an accomplished classical guitarist. When spring came around, I participated in little league baseball, where I excelled and enjoyed a break from my more serious athletic pursuits. As a teen I won triathlons and broke my high school’s pull-up record with 55 (next best was 17). The underlying quest was to discover the limits of my abilities. I found this fun and received quite a bit of attention from it in my small harbor town. During summers in California with my mother and her new husband, I was exposed to metaphysical concepts that fascinated me. She taught me that it was possible to make clouds disappear at will, transfer a headaches to a rock, move objects with your mind (telekinesis) and potentially teleport oneself. (For the record I have yet to succeed in telekinesis (or teleportation) or witness it). Each night we recorded our dreams and would attempt to analyze them in the morning. As for the other psychic feats, I was encouraged by several experiences. One night after swim practice I came home with a pounding headache. My dad offered me aspirin but I told him I planned to transfer my headache to a rock. He said he didn’t think this was possible, at which point I told him I would transfer it to him if he’d be willing to conduct a little experiment. I thought maybe if I were successful he would be more open to these metaphysical concepts. So while holding his hand, I passed my headache to him until I felt much better (5 minutes). A few minutes later I went to the kitchen and caught him reaching for the aspirin himself! On another occasion I sat on my porch attempting to vanish some puffy white clouds. My father, once again, offered his sincere cynicism. As a Harvard trained intellect he had not been exposed to such far-fetched, unscientific concepts and was not entirely pleased by my mother’s strange influences. Nonetheless I told him that I would make the three adjacent clouds disappear sequentially in a particular order. When they faded in that exact order, my father disappeared as well...just walked away without a word. Years later he told me of a friend of his who always answered the phone “hello Phil” whenever my dad called (before the days of caller ID).

I was also intrigued by tales of parents who reported that they knew the exact moment when their child was injured or in danger many miles away. I pondered what these phenomena suggest about the nature of our psychic capabilities. Was there some invisible information grid that we could tap into? Did this indicate that all information, everything happening in the universe, was being broadcast across space and time like radio waves, ready to be plucked out of the air by anyone who could psychically tune in? My young mind, captivated by fantasies of unlimited potential, searched for ways to conduct metaphysical experiments. It wasn’t enough to have a few quirky anecdotes; I wanted verifiable proof and tangible, life-altering applications. I wondered if internal information, such as the health of our organs or emotional states, was also up for grabs to anyone with a well- developed sixth sense. While swimming laps or rock-climbing the rocky Marblehead shoreline I mused about such things. What did these phenomena indicated about the nature of reality? And what could these powers offer for healing physical and emotional scars, becoming physically strong and healthy, and realizing a lasting state of profound psychological freedom?

Still unclear what to pursue, I followed in my mother’s footsteps of practicing bodywork. I had earned a pilot’s license while in college, and though world exploration had its allure, commercial flying wouldn’t fulfill my search for inner exploration and freedom. As a massage therapist I could earn $60-100/hr and start working in my desired field of healthcare. Shortly after launching my massage practice in the LA area (1993) I remembered what my former step-dad had shown me and I wondered if there were books I could study on muscle testing. I quickly discovered Touch for Health (TFH), by Dr. John Thie. He and Dr. George Goodheart had developed a technique known as Applied Kinesiology (AK) in the mid 60s and Dr. Thie wanted to make the work available to laypeople while Dr. Goodheart felt it should only be taught to chiropractors. TFH contained the basic tenets of AK and I devoured that book, memorizing the material within weeks. Using massage clients as guinea pigs, I learned how to test the 12 ‘indicator muscles’ to discover which acupuncture meridians were blocked (based on which muscles were ‘weak’). Then there were special reflex points on the body and head that could be rubbed to unblock these channels and restore strength to the corresponding muscles. It was fascinating and I couldn’t learn the material fast enough. I was hungry for more. Around that time I reconnected with my former step-dad, Dr. Blake Brown, and told him what I was studying. He informed me that these techniques were just the tip of the iceberg and the art of kinesiology had come a long way since the 60s when TFH was written. To learn the latest methods, however, I would need to go to chiropractic school. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken the required science courses in college to enter chiropractic school so I had to spend a year fulfilling the prerequisites—1 year each of Physics, Anatomy & Physiology, Organic chem and Inorganic chem. Thus by the end of 1994 I was ready to start Parker Chiropractic College in Dallas, TX. I had arrived at the chiropractic Mecca...the unofficial hub of the chiropractic seminar world at the time, where those doctors who were developing novel techniques came to teach students in weekend seminars. I was excited to meet like-minded young dreamers who were equally eager to learn the mystical arts of healing. Turned out most had entered chiropractic school for much more practical reasons...a rude awakening. But there were a few rare individuals that I connected with more deeply.

Although a simplified version of AK wasn’t taught until the 8th trimester (third year) of chiropractic school, there was an AK club that met once a week during lunch. Led by Mike Reyes, a 5th trimester student, roughly 20 attended the club (in a school of 1300). What he was teaching was nothing more than what I had memorized and practiced from TFH. So after the meeting I told Mike that I had already learned this stuff on my own and asked if he had anything more. We met after school and what he showed me changed my life forever. In addition to taking the 100-hour AK seminar program, Mike had been attending seminars in Clinical Kinesiology (CK). Developed by the late Alan Beardall DC and taught by Dr. Pat Fox from St. Louis., CK was the 6.0 version of AK. Instead of just testing for weak muscles (with their corresponding organ relationships) and turning them back on by rubbing certain points (and a myriad of other interesting techniques taught in AK), CK went much further. CK had theoretically discovered how to find the body’s highest priority, the root cause of all other imbalances. Using a system of hand modes, which resemble Indian mudras (essentially specific finger/hand positions and contacts), in conjunction with muscle testing, you could diagnose anything from bone misalignment, hormonal imbalance, blocked acupuncture channels, chronic or acute homeopathic issues, heavy metal toxicity, specific emotional issues and a million other things. Over the next year I would memorize over 400 hand modes. But on that day in the room with Mike, he showed me that I was out of balance with the earth’s polarity when I faced a certain direction. That’s subtle, I thought, but then it hit me. I had been swimming for exercise the day before and had repeatedly noticed that when I swam in one direction of the pool it took me 2 strokes more than when I swam in the other direction. As a high level swimmer this was highly curious, as I knew precisely how many strokes it should take me to swim each lap. In that moment with Mike I made the connection! I realized that when I was inefficiently swimming in the direction that took 2 additional strokes, I was facing the same direction that Mike was now testing that I was weak in. Here was a technique that had diagnosed something as subtle as an imbalance in my relationship to the magnetic energies of the earth when facing a particular direction. And then he fixed it!

And in that moment I knew I had found a way in to the exquisite vibrational memory of a person, where emotional traumas from years and lifetimes past remain. If I could enter this inner world and learn its secrets, I might be able to shift people’s ingrained programs that all the ‘talk therapy’ in the world had never succeeded in altering. Here was a technology that held the possibility for reclaiming a person’s full potential to be creative and brilliant, to be robustly healthy, to succeed in his/her life’s work, to form deeply loving relationships and friendships, to be free from addiction, to rest in contentment, to trust the perfect timing of Life in a state of gratitude for all that life brings in each moment. Sleep did not come for the next few days as my mind was on fire. Although I was one of two students in my class to earn a 4.0 in the first trimester (out of 130 students) my mind was a million miles away from the textbooks. On weekends, Mike and I would practice CK in his apartment for 8 hours a day, watching video of Dr. Fox’s seminars, and practicing on many classmates who had heard of the amazing new techniques we were doing.

The daily routine at that time was 6 hours of class, 5 hours of studying, workout, eat, and then practice CK till I fell asleep. By the beginning of 3rd trimester my passion for CK had only grown more intense. I longed to have more time to devote to studying CK. At this time I still had not met Dr. Fox or taken his live seminar. Only through 50 hours of seminar videos and practice with Mike had I been learning. Then in the 6th week of the 15-week trimester something alarming happened... My heart rate dropped into the low 30s. For days I had an inexplicably slow pulse. This went on for several days until one morning, on the drive to school, the message my body was trying to communicate hit me all at once —“your heart isn’t in school”. I knew in that moment this was the truth but I gave myself 24 hours before deciding to drop out of school for a while. After all, I would be throwing away the student loan money I had borrowed for that trimester. Couldn’t I hold out for 9 more weeks until the end of the trimester? But no, it had to be now and so I left and moved to Albuquerque, NM. I had recently met a girl while on a layover in Albuquerque and we had stayed in touch. She said there was a nice little house next to hers that was for rent so on Halloween day 1995 I made the drive from Dallas to New Mexico. The relationship lasted about a week but I enjoyed New Mexico and soon went out looking for people to practice on. Within a week of arriving I saw a big sign by a clinic on University Dr. that said “Pain Relief Center”. I concluded that was where people went when they were in pain. In the clinic, a 19 year-old girl was working in what appeared to be an herbal shop. She said the store belonged to an acupuncturist who owned three offices in town and that he worked 2 days a week in each. I thought he must be missing lots of business and offered to treat the girl with CK. She had been injured by a horse and was impressed by the work. She called and asked the owner if I could use the office to treat walk-in clients and split the money equally with him. Almost miraculously he agreed without ever meeting me or inquiring into what licenses I held.

So without a license to do anything but drive, I had secured an office in the heart of town and began seeing clients within a week of arriving. For the next 6 months I worked, wrote and recorded music, traveled around New Mexico, and started taking Shaolin kung fu classes. My mind was as sharp as a tack and I earned my brown belt in 4 months, learning a new ‘Animal form’ or weapons series each class. One client was a 24 year-old woman with moderate scoliosis. Her mother was a bodyworker in Taos, 3 hours away, and hadn’t been able to help her daughter. I worked on her for 2 hours a day twice a week. When her mother visited her a month later she broke down crying because she could see the difference from 50 feet away. The mother then invited me to come to Taos and found me many people to work on there. For a few nights, under that deep black sky, we watched a passing comet. On one of my last days in Taos, at a house down a little dirt road on the outskirts of town, I set up my massage table outside and worked on a woman in front of the house. There was nothing and no one around. Right after clearing a deep emotional issue in her, we heard what sounded like a train coming up the road, through the house on the other side of her home, and ripping the neighbor’s metal roof half-off. We had no clue what was going on. We held our breath, on that cloudless day, as we watched a tornado come around the side of her house, 30 feet away from us, twisting its way up her driveway. One of us said, “well that was a powerful treatment!” We both laughed, thankful to be alive.

On returning to the Lone Star state I moved in with Mike. My family’s fears of me not returning to school to complete my degree ended in May 1996. To pursue my dream I knew I wanted and needed to be a licensed doctor and my education had really just begun. I had much to learn before I would feel secure in my knowledge and skill as a healthcare professional. I didn’t even know how to give a chiropractic adjustment at that time so there was no doubt I was going back to finish what I had started. Towards the end of my time in New Mexico, Dr. Fox (who goes by Pat) held another seminar in Dallas and I attended. Mike had leaked to Pat that there was a very passionate student diligently studying CK. CK was turning me into the well-rounded practitioner I had come to Parker to become and Pat was the perfect mentor...funny, brilliant, charismatic, magical. And to top it off, Pat was a swimmer! Over the next couple years, during the trimester breaks, I traveled to St. Louis and spent many days with Pat’s family, watching him work 12 hour days, picking his brain at night while we played ping pong, swimming with him at 5:30 am before work. The man was absolutely tireless. And he had hundreds of successful cases with advanced cancer, Parkinson’s, type-1 diabetes—things most people consider incurable. He had a way of finding, through muscle testing, the body’s logic for creating the disease. He reasoned that the body creates a disease as a poor unconscious strategy to protect itself or achieve something it perceives as beneficial. The logic is that the innate intelligence would never do something simply to harm the person; there must be some gain. For example, if someone is afraid of failing in something (a job, a relationship, a personal goal, making a hard choice) then illness offers an escape from having to deal with that fear. CK works to undo the unresolved emotion or dysfunctional pattern in the psyche and then the body no longer has a need for the disease.

Chiropractic school is basically the same as medical school. The curricula and number of classroom hours we take are nearly identical. We share the same basic science courses as our allopathic colleagues and take many of the same national board exams: cell biology, human anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, histology, microbiology etc. The main difference is that DCs have far more radiology courses (8), while MDs generally only have one. And while they’re developing skills in surgery and studying about drugs, we are learning about nutrition and mastering the many techniques for adjusting the human frame to remove nerve interference. The premise of freeing the body of nerve interference is that the nervous system controls all the other organ systems (digestive, immune, cardiovascular, endocrine etc.). And when this master system is unobstructed, it can perform its job with maximum efficiency, regulating all bodily functions intelligently, and the body heals itself of most conditions.

Now in addition to Parker’s intensive doctoral program, continuing to improve my CK skills, and generally living my life (furthering my classical guitar repertoire, exercising, relationship), I took a number of other seminars on the weekends. I received a 100-hour certificate in acupuncture and explored several other kinesiology-based techniques. One such technique was called Chiro Plus Kinesiology (CPK), developed and taught by Milton Dowdy DC. Dr. Dowdy had been a close colleague of Dr. Beardall (developer of CK) during the earliest days of Beardall’s discoveries. Dowdy took these initial insights and went on to build an entire technique based on his own hand mode system. Several of my classmates took the CPK courses as well and we practiced on each other for a number of months. I found CPK to be far less sophisticated than CK in many ways but, as always, I gained some valuable insights. Any time a man has dedicated his life to freeing humanity from its afflictions, he gleans at least a few pearls of wisdom that can be used to further ones own shared-aspirations. The brilliant insight I garnered from Dr. Dowdy came from an off-hand comment. He called the point between the eyebrows the “Master Point” and said this point was a connection to the pituitary, the master hormonal gland. He then claimed that if you hold an active hand mode at that spot, the frequency created by the hand mode automatically makes the corrections in the body and a physical treatment is not required. For example, if you hold the special hand mode corresponding to the “Atlas” (first cervical vertebra) and the patient’s muscle tests weak, then they have an alignment issue with their atlas. If you then hold that hand mode frequency at the master point, he asserted, the atlas becomes aligned in a few seconds. In my attempts to test this theory I did not find that it worked. However, later I will share a version of this phenomenon I discovered during my final year at Parker that worked every time.

When I re-entered Parker after two trimesters spent in New Mexico, I joined a different and much larger class with 230 students. One of my new classmates, Michael Phillips, had also studied Applied Kinesiology prior to arriving at Parker and had mentored with a renowned AK doctor in Houston. With his impressive AK skills already acquired, Mike had inspired a number of our classmates to take the AK 100-hour series. Thus the AK click was formed, which I was remotely a part of. We practiced on each other between classes and they went to the weekend AK seminars. The group was well established by the time I joined the class in May ’96 and I think my CK skills were too overwhelming and advanced for them to want to go down that road with me. I had memorized 400 hand modes by that time and had incorporated Neuro Emotional Technique (NET), which CK took from Dr. Scott Walker to address emotional issues. Additionally, I was incorporating acupuncture, fixing nutritional issues, working with homeopathic remedies, clearing limiting beliefs, correcting body polarity imbalances, diagnosing Geopathic stressors, and working with the human biocomputer in ways that were too foreign and radical for them to consider. Admittedly I had taken on eating an elephant and my classmates were just not that hungry.

While at Parker I also received training in Network Spinal Analysis, Gonstead, Sacral-Occipital Technique (SOT), Cox flexion/distraction, Thompson drop table, Upper Cervical specific, Diversified, Activator Method, and studied Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique (BEST) from videos. BEST was what my former step-dad practiced. On many occasions, a number of my classmates and I went after hours and met with advanced docs in the Dallas area that had developed interesting methods and protocols, including novel computer-based diagnostic tools. One noteworthy young colleague, Brett Brimhall, had a father who was a well-known kinesiology-based chiropractor in Arizona. The dad, Dr. John Brimhall, taught seminars that were very well attended on how to build a million dollar wellness practice. He had a six-step protocol that worked well when attempting to holistically treat hundreds of people a week. Brett had grown up learning his father’s system and was very skillful and humble. Though he was two years behind us in school, many of us reached out to him for coaching, mostly in cranial adjusting, which he had already mastered. I too attended Dr. Brimhall’s class, twice, and picked up a number of valuable tools and ideas that I continue to use.

On Tuesdays at Parker all 1300 students met in the auditorium for a general assembly. Speakers would come to share their pearls. Deepak Chopra, in town to lead a weekend workshop, spoke to the Parker students. Chopra’s book, Quantum Healing, had been an inspiration to me in my days as a massage therapist. He explained that the mind is the bridge between the metaphysical and the physical. The mind generates a thought or intention, which moves molecules that excite nerves, which fires muscles that create motion or action. In other words if I say, “move you finger”, that thought (non-physical) moves calcium ions (physical/has mass), that triggers a nerve impulse causing the finger muscle to contract and moves an object (the finger). Chopra’s book had finally given me a scientific rationale for the mind having the power to move objects...at least molecular objects in our bodies.

The most notable assembly, however, was led by Dr. George Goodheart, founder of Applied Kinesiology in 1964. George was in town for a convention of the top AK doctors in the world, which the Parker students were allowed to attend, and of course I did. Goodheart, 75 at the time, who was said to be able to recall the details of every patient he had ever work on, drilled the following message into the students:

SEE with eyes that see. REALLY SEE.
FEEL with hands that feel. REALLY FEEL.
HEAR with ears that hear. REALLY HEAR.

From this message I understood that there were things we could learn to pick up from our patients if we became hypersensitive and acutely present. Practice thus became like meditation where I was keenly aware of the words, mannerisms, smell, and even how I felt being in a patient’s presence. These observations and intuitions were clues into what was out of balance in their lives and in need of healing.

*Of course I geeked out when Dr. Goodheart signed my massage table. Chris Tate and the Importance of Priority Perhaps CK’s greatest contribution to the art of kinesiology was its ability to determine a person’s healing priority. AK could find various things that were ‘out of whack’ and fix them buts didn’t have a way to figure out if an issue was a primary or a secondary/compensatory problem. If it were compensatory, the body would throw it right back out very quickly after ‘fixing’ it. But if you resolved a primary imbalance, many secondary problems correct themselves and the changes are stable.

Towards the end of my years at Parker, a classmate named Chris asked me to work on him. After doing CK on him for a half hour, clearing one priority after another, his body had let go of hundreds of subtle imbalances. Then his body ‘requested’ that I adjust his atlas, the bone just below the skull. I was not a particularly great adjuster at that point in my training, however the atlas released beautifully. No problem.

Before I could move on to the next therapy Chris stopped me. What he said I have remembered for 20 years. He told me his atlas had been stuck and in pain for 3 years. He had reached out to many talented Parker students, as well as staff doctors, and no one had been able to adjust it. But by preparing his nervous system with the other therapies his system requested, the body deeply relaxed and when the atlas was ready to move it gave me permission to adjust it. This experience showed me the power of listening to the body, trusting the process, and only making corrections that the body is ready for. Master Point Therapy (6th chakra/between eyebrows)

After taking CPK with Dr. Dowdy and playing around with hand modes for a year or two I discovered something interesting. When I muscle tested someone while simultaneously contacting their ‘Master Point’ with highly specific points on or between my fingertips, their muscle went weak. It was as if the fingertip was a micro radio dial and you could change the frequency by rolling the tip ever so slightly when in contact with the master point. It seemed like the body needed particular frequencies that you could transmit with the fingertips or the spaces between them.

The result of holding this contact for a few seconds was that the body became organized and people’s functionally uneven leg-length spontaneously corrected. Of course this didn’t work if the person had an anatomical leg-length difference, but that was rare. After I had seen this work 20 times in a row I demonstrated it for the class. I asked a classmate to check another student’s leg length while they lay supine. The tester reported one leg was half an inch shorter than the other. Then I applied the contact for five to ten seconds and the student said that the legs perfectly evened out. The thing that shocked me the most was that none of the students cared or wanted to learn how to do this.

Years later I discovered that this technique was far more profound than I originally realized. Beyond its benefits in physically balancing a patient, it turned out to be a valuable tool for accelerating spiritual growth and increasing self-awareness. But that’s a topic for another book.

Finally, four long years after making the long drive from Los Angeles to Dallas, I returned to California a doctor, with a few hundred dollars to my name, but rich in experience. I had accumulated all the knowledge I could in those years, finishing the program fourth scholastically in a class of 230, and eager to start healing the world.

I began a practice in Ojai while living with mom. With little money and no clients, options are limited. I soon joined a wonderful yoga class, adjusted some of the yoga students after class, and in a town of 8000 people word spread quickly about my sophisticated methods. In two months I had saved enough to rent the left wing of a house built for Krishnamurti to resemble a small replica of the Taj Mahal in the last years of his life. I had married in 1997 and together we lived in Ojai for two years while I continued to refine my work and learned how to run a practice. Part of my mentality involves the idea that progress is a never-ending pursuit, as I constantly sought to improve my craft. I was troubled by the limitations, complexity, and overall shortcomings I found in every system I studied. Some kinesiology-based systems, such as Quantum Reflex Analysis, focus solely on the nutritional aspect of healing and largely ignore the structural and emotional. NET focuses exclusively on emotions, using a spinal tapping technique to superficially clear emotional issues. I thought, ‘this can’t be the ultimate way to heal emotional trauma...tapping on the spine while holding special points on the head and organs!’

All techniques I explored (not including CK) were completely “doctor- driven systems”, meaning that the treatment the patient received was determined by the doctor’s protocol, training, and philosophy. In technique after technique I discovered the inventor had certain strengths, and the systems they built were lopsided toward the aspect of healing they we comfortable working with. Thus their system was once again more about the practitioner and not the patient.

I envisioned a purely “patient-driven” technique that offered a vast menu of all the structural, nutritional, and energetic modalities that a holistic practitioner offered and, through muscle testing, allowed the patient’s innate intelligence to choose which modality was most appropriate. I imagined myself as a waiter asking the patient, ‘’what can I get you”? A waiter would never tell the customer what they should order based on the waiter’s preferences, yet that was exactly what all practitioners were doing to a greater or lesser degree.

Healing techniques I found were like the famous Saturday Night Live restaurant skit where John Belushi, the waiter, only serves cheeseburgers and Pepsi (“No Coke, Pepsi”). The body has no choice! And I knew that if the body’s wisdom could call the shots, the possibilities were profound. If the practitioner was truly listening to the patient, lifetimes worth of healing could be resolved in a very short period of time.

I began to realize it was possible to build a healing system comparable to a ‘talking Rubik’s Cube’ that instructs you how to put it back together. I was looking to make a system where the patient’s body tells me exactly what the patient needs...structurally, nutritionally, and energetically... in the ideal sequence, to restore them to wholeness at every level.

As for CK, though unimaginably more thorough and complete than anything else being taught, it was so complex that less than 10 people in the world were considered highly proficient. Not even Dr. Beardall’s son, a practicing naturopath, had a good conceptual grasp on his dad’s system. Besides the complexity of learning hundreds of hand modes, memorizing 60 detailed structural therapies (ex. Lip and Bennett reflexes, Venous Zones thoracic and on and on) and a thousand other details, when it came to emotional healing, I was not satisfied that CK had nothing to offer besides NET. CK was extremely involved structurally and biochemically, but emotionally it was severely limited as far as corrective treatment options. When the body prioritized emotional healing, NET was the only option CK had to offer. I was searching for a way to precisely cancel the vibrational memory of past trauma and toxic emotions from the human energy field. This vision required a much more sophisticated energetic healing system than any that had come before. I realized that holistic healing was in its infancy as an art form and we have so much to learn about restoring a person to wholeness.

My vision was to design a system that was incredibly powerful yet could be learned in a few days and mastered in under a year. I enjoy simplicity... E=MC2... F=MA...the elegance of physics. I realized that the primary advantage of kinesiology is that the body can tell you what it wants using this simple binary system. Muscle testing offers a way for the body to say “yes/no” to whatever you’re asking it.

As a practitioner I only need two pieces of information from the body at any moment...’where in the body am I invited to go?’ And ‘what would you like me to do?’ This is my E=MC2.

Pertaining to structural work and chiropractic, I watched advocates of various techniques argue the merits of high force vs low force adjustments, as though one were inherently better than the other. Perhaps both are right sometimes. Yin is not necessarily better than Yang; they both have their place. With kinesiology we have the ability to ask the body if it wants a particular bone adjusted with high, medium or low force. The best adjustment is delivered by applying the perfect amount of force, in the perfect location to effectively move the bone and simultaneously do no harm. And by muscle testing, the body can tell us how much force is called for. There are dozens of technical details on adjusting, such as determining the ideal phase of breath when adjusting to put the bone not only into place but also into proper spinal rhythm, but these are beyond the scope of this history.

When it came to popular nutritional techniques, they always looked to test for weak organs and glands and then prescribe a supplement to fix them. This approach fails in several ways: 1. The patient’s problem might not be an organ or gland. The trouble might be an organ system or be a systemic (whole body) deficiency, toxicity, allergy or infection. Thus by limiting the options to organs and supplements, the body usually is not able to get the optimal solution to the problem. 2. Not every biochemical issue can be resolved with a supplement. Supplements are supplemental to DIET! There’s no supplement to address a food that a patient should ultimately avoid.

Over time I refined my nutritional system in a way that allows the body to define the problem in its own terms. I now muscle test if the body’s main biochemical issue should be addressed as an organ/gland issue, an organ system issue, or a systemic issue. Once determined, we ask if it wants to deal with it through diet or supplements. Finally we ask if the issue pertains to a food or supplement we should be adding or removing from the patient’s diet.

Kinesiology is a tool for listening to the body’s requests, yet I found that people who create healing systems tend to focus on the aspect of healing in which they are most experienced (nutrition, bodywork, energy healing) and none had put it all together in a comprehensive yet simple way.

And then, of course, there were systems designed to maximize profit. You could spot them by how they advertised their seminar--“The Million Dollar Nutrition Based Practice”. My belief is that ego and greed are an impediment to true service. One can earn a fine living while serving people with integrity. My motto is to treat my patients the way I would want to be treated if I had a health concern and was paying for care... kinda like the Golden Rule.

The Whitten Method didn’t come together overnight. It went through hundreds of edits and various versions, as I constantly added new ideas and approaches, removing things I found were overly complex or not useful. During the first decade of practice I spent free hours each day working on myself. I tested new methods for healing old physical and emotional traumas, overcoming insecurities and addiction to sugar, strengthening my immune system, and reprogramming poverty consciousness.

I stopped taking other seminars, as I found that kinesiology offered a connection to my intuition and taught me all I needed to know. I decided that my patients, as well as my own body, would be my laboratory. I discovered how to listen, as Goodheart had pleaded, to what the patient’s body was silently attempting to communicate and freshly discovered the principles of healing for myself. I became my own authority, not deferring to someone, somewhere who had written a book.

Slowly, over many years and hundreds of novel insights, I organized and reorganized information in various ways to ensure the flow chart was all- inclusive, logical, and streamlined. I grappled endlessly with dilemmas such as: Which makes more sense, 1. Asking the body first what modality it wants (ex. massage, adjustments, color therapy) and then determining all the places in the body that need that type of therapy or 2. Asking first where the body wants to be treated and then diagnosing all the modalities that are needed at that particular location. Another issue involved how to categorize homeopathy. Does it belong in the list of biochemical/nutritional remedies, energetic modalities, or in a category of its own?

Then there was the realization that the highest priority may not be to heal something in the present time. So for a while I first asked whether the patient’s priority was an ancestral pattern, a past life, the current life (past, present or future), or an entirely alternate dimension. So for each new approach I explored where the body’s intelligence led me; I wanted to test the benefits and drawbacks of organizing the flow chart in different way to see if it resulted in a better treatment.

I was also looking to maximize simplicity and adopt the system that was both complete yet easy for students to learn...trim out unnecessary complexity. I realized that if the system were too complex for students, this great work would die with me. Also there were aspects of the system that rarely or never came up in the course of a session so I discarded them. No concept was too bizarre to consider. I learned from books on Spiritual laws and quantum physics that pointed to a reality beyond our five senses. Perhaps in these realms lay the magic to curing the incurable. I recognized that the intellect is tremendously limited compared to the intelligence of the subconscious mind, which creates and maintains these amazing bodies. And only by suspending the rational mind could I give the body’s wisdom a chance to truly ask for what it wants...no matter how odd it may seem. In other words, I couldn’t tell the body “let me know what you need...as long as it isn’t too weird!” I either had to trust it or not. It required a leap of faith. In time it became apparent that I had created a remarkably unique system, far beyond some minor additions or alterations to CK.

The Whitten Method was a new healing system that resolved a few key limitations I had found in CK and made it 10x easier to learn.

To call one’s healing work ‘holistic’, it has to address all aspects of the person. We have to treat the whole person. Just as water can exist as solid, liquid or gas, a person (or animal) is comprised of all three realms as well. The solid is the bones and soft tissues; the liquid is our biochemistry (nutrients, hormones, neurotransmitters) that dissolves in the blood and cellular fluids; the gas is all the invisible stuff--our personality, emotions, habits, meridians, chakras, stress, core beliefs etc. All these factors play a role in our health and well-being.

Now here is an important principle to understanding how the Whitten Method works: how do we effect changes in each of the three realms? What are the proper tools? To alter, manipulate, or treat someone structurally we use our structure...our hands and perhaps mechanical tools and devices that adjust bones and break up adhesions. When it comes to improving someone’s biochemistry, the tools are diet and supplements (concentrated food). And finally, to shift the body energetically, the tool we use is “Mind, focused thought, intention”. One can also use things like homeopathics, sound, flower remedies or essential oils--liquid carriers of vibration. Everything in the universe impacts us energetically; nothing is without effect. Colors, smells, the planets and stars, music, the plant and animal world, certainly people and world events etc. These all impact and play a role in the state of our mind/body. Everything has a butterfly wing effect. We are interconnected with everything in the universe and can use our mind to receive and transmit the frequency of anything. I call these invisible fibers that emanate out from us the ‘non-local Self’. This energy network connects us to the grand universe, like the span of tiny threads that enable the spider to feel whatever comes into its web and affects its territory. This concept makes sense when we consider the stories of mothers that know the moment their child is in trouble or injured. That information is very relevant to that mother’s well-being. The existence of accurate psychics further supports that this is reality.

Since we can connect with, and re-transmit, any frequency in the world, we can take advantage of this ability for the purposes of healing, By categorizing and listing every type of phenomenon in the universe, we can give the patient’s innate intelligence a comprehensive choice of any natural frequency (or combination of frequencies) for cancelling pathological energy that is stuck in the body. For example, if one is plagued by old resentments, that emotion lives in the body tissues at a particular frequency. To cancel that frequency we have to perfectly match it. This is the phenomenon known in physics as wave cancellation; two equal waves cancel each other. Each energetic modality (color, gems, sound, sacred geometry etc.) has a particular range of frequencies. For instance the color spectrum runs essentially from 400-700nm. And through kinesiology we can select the perfect modality with the frequency range needed to clear a particular issue from the body. Once we have found the precise energetic antidote, we can run that frequency using focused intention. With a bit of practice, all this, from diagnosis to treatment, can be done in a few seconds.

Never satisfied, I became interested to see if there was a way to unlock the body’s ability to slow or reverse the aging process, access a greater percentage of the brain, heart and gut intelligence, open channels for success and prosperity, and basically wake up ours potential to be brilliant, creative, happy, and spontaneous. Novel ideas never stop coming, and the method evolves daily, but the foundation is solid, like a rooted tree with leaves and flowers that come and go.

First of all muscle testing is an inaccurate name. We are not testing muscles. The brain has all the data about the individual but we can’t get to the information directly. What was ingeniously discovered is that when we make a true statement, while pressing on the arm and testing the muscle, the electricity flows down the nerve and the muscle engages. When the statement is not true, the electricity doesn’t flow and the muscle does not engage and tests weak under pressure. So what we’re actually testing is whether electricity is flowing on the nerves and thus turning muscles on or off. We’re using muscles to test electrical flow. It’s subtle and highly sensitive to things like thoughts. This makes kinesiology vulnerable to inaccurate testing, especially in beginners.

At its highest level, muscle testing has tremendous potential to transform the world of healthcare. Daily, my patients are amazed at how I find issues they hadn’t told me about, like infected root canals. The principles are sounds and with time and practice it can be a highly reliable tool for diagnosing many ailments. Some things are easily diagnosed with kinesiology, like vertebral subluxations (misalignments). Other issues, like cancer, I’m not sure how well kinesiology would perform in a laboratory setting.

For chronic ailments, the body often adapts and accepts the condition as the new norm and no longer treats it as a problem. As a result basic muscle testing may not expose an issue. For such cases, I have developed methods to assist the body in recognizing hidden problems that have been pushed into the background. Not every practitioner has the same abilities and experience so there are bound to be differences in readings if tested objectively. Each day I take the time to deeply clear myself before working on patients so the readings are as accurate as possible. No system, including, hi-tech methods like x-ray, are foolproof. HIV testing and Pap smears are famous for having high rates of false-positives.

In the advanced techniques I work to reverse the aging process by opening the physiological channels that control aging. Everything to me is a grand experiment in human potential. I have also been a life-long surfer and admirer of Kelly Slater. At the end of 2007, word was out that Kelly was in relationship with a woman in my hometown of Santa Barbara and spending considerable time there. He had won 8 world titles already and was considered the greatest surfer of all time but at 35 he wasn’t the top guy anymore. One morning, after a fantastic surf session, I got my opportunity.

On this day in February, 2008, Kelly pulled into the parking lot at Rincon, a world famous surf spot in town. I walked up and told him I had developed a healing system that could get him so balanced on every level he would be number one again. A month later he called and we worked together a few times that year. Amazingly, he won every contest following our treatments and easily won the world title that year (#9). The next year I only treated him once and again he won the next contest but lost all the other contests that year and didn’t win the title.

Seeing the trend, we worked closely for the next two years while the surf world was shaking their collective heads wondering how this 38-39 year old was still winning against the rising stars 20 years younger than he. In 2010 he won his 10th world title and was so grateful for the results I had helped him to achieve, he gave me 10% of his winnings. In 2011 he did it again, clinching the title even before the final contest of the year. Why he stopped working with me, only he knows. But now at 47 and still trying, he hasn’t won since.

At the most fundamental level, beyond the view even of electron microscopes, we are composed of atoms. With a tiny proton/neutron core and infinitesimally tiny whirling electrons, spinning at distinct distances from the nucleus, atoms resemble a micro solar system. And like the solar system, atoms are 99.999% empty space held together, however, not by gravity but by electromagnetic forces. So when one contemplates healing, the questions arises ‘what does trauma and disease look and feel like in a human body that is composed of 99.99% empty space? What is the nature of trauma at the energetic, invisible level? Is it even possible to direct healing at such a level? How does one sense disturbances that are so intangible? And yet, if it were possible, could this be the secret to miracle cures that science has long sought to discover?’ Science has generally looked for cures at the cellular level, thinking only inside the proverbial box of the cell.

When you consider clouds, they are clearly distinct from the blue sky around them. You know precisely when you fly into one because visibility is greatly diminished. And yet to touch a cloud you realize that it has no solid form... just vapor, smoke. When you watch them on a summer day they grow and move, shape-shift and vanish like our stream of consciousness. Over many years, holding thousands of necks, feeling deeply into the disturbed stillness of sick and traumatized tissues for thousands of hours, one develops a sixth sense. Words are inadequate to describe such subtle characteristics but trauma feels something like clouds of anxiety. If healthy tissue conveys a feeling of calm and relaxation, an injured mind/body feels like erratic, incoherent wave-patterns. Like static electricity without the zap. And these disturbances live in the body in distinct locations that can be found with muscle testing and intuition.

Healing at this level becomes an act of mind or consciousness. Muscle testing becomes a tool to ask for direction and permission from the patient’s consciousness. The silent conversation with Innate goes like this...”where am I invited to work (head, neck, chest, abdomen etc.)?” Once I know the precise location and depth in the body where the patient’s innate intelligence has determined is the highest priority, I can ask for the type of therapy it wants (physical, nutritional or energetic). I then narrow this down further to the specific modality that is requested. If an adjustment to a bone is needed, I then ask how much force and speed is required (on a 10 pt. scale). If an energetic therapy is called for, I have a list of about 60 possibilities from color & sound, flower remedies & sacred geometry, concepts like love and compassion and on and on. In this way I become a servant to the body’s wisdom so that restorative vital energy can flow freely and healing can occur.

In 2011 I was asked by several massage therapists to teach the Whitten Method in Buffalo, NY. I told them if they could get a small room full of students I’d put together a course. I had never tried to teach the work to anyone and realized there would be a learning curve to figure out the best way to chunk the information. Fifteen people attended and the response was tremendous. Soon I was flying to Buffalo every couple months for the next 2 1⁄2 years, teaching over 400 students (including stay-at home moms, chiropractors and even a few medical doctors). We even held two 6-month master class series’ for the most serious students. In that time I learned a lot about how to teach this work. I have since taught workshops in Chicago, California and was invited to present a talk and demo at the annual Touch for Health conference. One thing became clear early on...teenagers learn the fastest. There’s something about it...the less someone knows, the more easily they can be taught. It’s like the old Zen Buddhist teaching: the master kept pouring the tea in the student’s cup past the point of overflowing. The student asked, “what are you doing? The cup is full”. Master says, “like the cup you must empty your mind. Until your cup is empty I can’t pour my teaching into you”.

Healthy people make healthy worlds. Health is the first wealth. If we want to save the world, health is the first thing that must be addressed. No matter where we go, we have to live in these bodies. If we lack energy or are in pain or have a mind that is worried, frustrated or disturbed in some way, then life is a misery. Healthy, happy people tend to be more compassionate; they make better parents and are a blessing to the people around them. Only unhealed people make war, pursue selfish desires, and are generally destructive, either overtly or covertly. My vision is that thousands of people learn this work and that everyone has access to profound healing. Children aren’t currently taught the basic principles for remaining happy, healthy, and successful. When was the last time you made use of the trigonometry or quadratic equation you were taught? Kids spend hours learning about the revolution in France yet they’ve lost their intuitive wisdom for knowing what’s healthy to eat. They learn thousands of useless facts yet they don’t know how to process stressful thoughts, cultivate a peaceful, calm mind, be a problem solver, communicate confidently, and systematically achieve their dreams. We have the technology to make the world a much better place. Each person is born with genius in some area of life. I envision that through deep healing every person unlocks that potential and unleashes the best version of themself on the world.

My advice for my son on his 18th birthday was this: Live today well. Focus on doing your best each day: wake up in time to make a healthy breakfast, drink water, do your morning ritual, set your intentions for the day, give thanks for the miracle that life is, and joyfully spend your hours doing things that are in alignment with your values and aspirations.

As far as the Whitten Method, people would benefit from 1 or 2 week-long retreats, where they can receive healing, detoxification, and education. Americans generally have not been taught how to prepare real food. They are addicted to sugar, alcohol, prescription drugs, TV, cell phones and on and on.

Nature heals: Take people out in nature, away from screens. Barefoot. This allows the addictive mind to become calm, reset, and start to shift toward real sustainable health.

Movement heals: People need to learn how to move and exercise in ways that feel good, lubricate the joints, increase strength, and improve cardiovascular health.

Healthy habits: People need to learn the science and technology for breaking bad habits and forming good habits. Habits don’t require willpower; they become automatic. So building healthy habits is the key to long-term success.

Mind: Offer people techniques to process stress and transform destructive mental habits. Teach them to identify the thoughts that are causing stress. When they realize that many of these thoughts are not even true they start to break free from the trap of the mind. Then we show them how to choose thoughts that empower and bring peace. Essentially we need to train people how to be healthy humans. Train thousands of people who can go into grade schools and teach the basics of muscle testing to children so they have the tools to stay connected to their intuition. Build institutions and dozens of retreat centers that actually heal those in chronic pain.

The current healthcare model merely offers a person drugs to temporarily mask their pain. This is a human tragedy. It’s an utter failure of the healthcare system. We don’t even have a healthcare system; it’s a disease care system.

Real healing is possible but it requires some work. Shots and drugs are for people who have given up. Doctors who participate in this system know they are not being true doctors. The earliest definition of ‘doctor’ dates back to the 14th century Latin word for ‘teacher’. The Whitten Method retreats seek to restore the old definition. Both healing people, mind, body and spirit, and teaching them to restore their lives back to harmony; this is my vision.